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Bachelors and spinsters are concepts consigned to history. But figures suggest that new terms might be needed as the number of single people in their 50s has doubled in 15 years.

Analysis of ONS figures for the Sunday Telegraph show that the number of people in their fifties who have never been married or in a civil partnership, and who do not cohabit has almost doubled since 2002, from 377,180 to 724,439.

While the overall number of people who have never married or been in a civil partnership has increased slightly from 20,092,604 in 2002 to 22,678,798 in 2015, the increase has been significant for those in their late forties, fifties and sixties.

The shift is particularly striking among women. The number in their early fifties who have never married has increased by 150 per cent in 13 years, from 74,941 in 2002 to 185,694 in 2015.

Among men the number increased from 135,216 to 228,078, a 70 per cent rise. Meanwhile plunging divorce rates suggest that those who do marry are now less likely to split. Analysis published in December suggested that divorce fell to its lowest level for 40 years in 2014.

Divorce rate increased from 5.9 divorces per 1,000 couples in 1971 to 9.5 in 1972Credit:
PA

Experts suggest that commitment-phobic "silver singles" may have experienced their parents splitting up when children as divorce laws were liberalised in the early 1970s.

The Divorce Reform Act of 1969 allowed couples to divorce without having to prove fault – instead they could legally split if they had been separated for two years or more.

The divorce rate increased from 5.9 divorces per 1,000 couples in 1971 to 9.5 in 1972. Divorce rates continued to increase during the 1970s and peaked during the 1990s, at a high of 14.2 splits per 1,000 couples in 1994.

Witnessing people close to you going through such domestic trauma can have a significant deterrent impact when it comes to thinking about one’s own circumstancesLawyer Alice Couriel

Professor Ann Buchanan, of Oxford University, is a former social worker who researches the effects of divorce on children.

She said: “Divorce wasn’t so acceptable then so they would have been in their 20s and 30s and finding themselves a bit outside the norm.

“Bad experiences with divorce would certainly mean they were less likely to commit themselves,” she said. She added that her own research had shown that otherwise high-achieving young adults carried a strong sense of “sadness” about their parents’ divorces many years after they had taken place.

Debora Price, a professor of social gerontology at Manchester University, agreed that this spate of divorces “almost certainly had an effect”.